The English Glass Chandelier

BY MARTIN C. F. MORTIMER

A review of English glass chandeliers might well start at Hampton Court. There are
two reasons for this. Amongst the meagre survivals of the grand furnishings which
it received when Dutch William commissioned Wren to extend it so magnificently
are three chandeliers. All have frames of silver-plated brass embellished, not to say
encrusted, with drops of rock crystal. The celebrated fitting in the Queen’s Bed­
chamber with its frame of pairs of cast lions and unicorns was firmly attributed
many years ago to Benjamin Goodison, and made in 1736. That which hangs in the
Queen’s Audience Chamber is in relatively good state and resembles continental
parallels in its use of continuous strings of spherical crystals which follow the curves
of the arms and frame. The chandelier in the King’s Audience Chamber continues
to pose problems. The much-travelled Celia Fiennes noted a ‘crystal branch’,
possibly in this room, in about 1697, but the present fitting does not give any sort
of appearance of being of this date. It is heavily encrusted with diagonally intersec­
ting rows of beads, many of which are cut. At the intersections are rosettes of
radially-arranged pear-shaped crystals. The frame includes arms for 12 candles but
of aimless profile, entirely lacking the vigour of Restoration design. Although these
chandeliers represent an exceedingly small and rare group, it remains that very little
is known about them. Present feeling is that they owe more to the Continent,
perhaps more specifically even to Scandinavia, than to this country, or may have
been assembled here from imported crystals. The chandelier from the King’s Au­
dience Chamber which was severely damaged in the recent fire, has perhaps been
totally re-built, possibly twice.
The second reason for choosing Hampton Court as a point of departure in the
story of chandeliers is that it is the home of a considerable series of bevelled looking-
glasses. Many of these were fitted in the wainscot over chimney pieces and, together
with surviving window panes, had bevelled borders and date from the fitting up of
Wren’s extensions in the early 1690s. Subsequent furnishings provided a series of
elaborate pier glasses, some with bevelled borders of complicated section. The con­
temporary term for work of this sort was ‘diamonding’ or ‘diamond cutting’. It was
from the grinding of the borders of cast glass plates that the craft of cutting evolved,
and chandeliers were amongst the earliest glass artefacts to receive cutting.
While acknowledging the early date of the crystal chandeliers at Hampton Court,
they do not in any way appear to be stylistic parents of what the English glass
chandelier epitomises. The real start comes with the use of load-bearing glass arms.
These appeared first, there seems no doubt, on the aprons of pier glasses. James
Moore, a prominent cabinet-maker who, from 1714 was in partnership with John
Gumley, plate glass maker, supplied a pair of well-known gilt gesso wall mirrors
with glass arms to Erthig at a time which varies with authorities between 1720 and
1724-6. There are also two pairs of these glass arms or sconces fitted with brass
wall mounts and attached to wainscot at Boughton, Northamptonshire.
The most frequently illustrated example of the early use ot glass arms is the
candelabrum or table chandelier in the Victoria and Albert Museum (Fig. 1). Each
arm was made in a single piece: the separate components ol candle tube, drip pan

39
and supporting arm being welded into a unit. In this instance, the four arms are
joined to a finely formed central turning with teared knops above and below. The
whole sockets into a heavily made candlestick or base, and the teared knops combine
with the annular moulding and terraced foot to date the piece to around 1725.

*
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fmk,
'*m
1. Four-light candelabrum, c. 1725. 2. Eight-light chandelier, c. 1725.
Victoria and Albert Museum. Private Collection.

This piece, then, is the real point of departure for the English glass chandelier.
It is extremely rare: there is another at Corning, and a fragment was seen last year
in a London saleroom, but at present no others are known. But then, hanging
chandeliers of this type are rare too. Fig. 2 illustrates a complete example, the arms
of which are scarcely graceful. It will be seen that all the stem pieces are cut. For
long enough it has been considered that lack of cutting on the arms of early glass
chandeliers, all other parts of which were cut, suggests that their makers feared that
the delicate arms would not survive cutting. However, as has been said, cutting
developed from bevelling of mirror plates and, although patents were taken out for
various machines in the late 17th century to assist the laborious process, plates and
their simpler borders were still ground and decorated horizontally, any machinery
or grinding equipment being applied to them rather than they being offered to the
wheels. This is not to say that wheel cutting was not used on mirror plates at this
time. Very soon after the turn of the century many examples of elaborate pier
glasses are seen, with cyphers of twined initials in their crests, to say nothing of the
shaped link pieces which were used, often in sapphire blue to cover the joints bet­
ween sections of border. Nevertheless, a study of early cutting on articles other than
mirrors shows that a great deal of it was in flat planes, and an arm with an integral
drip pan would have been an awkward component to cut. Was most early cutting
in the hands of those whose principal work was the grinding or diamondin'; of plate
glass? It is, perhaps, no accident that the first recorded appearance of the word

40
‘chandelier’ is in an advertisement of John Gumley in the London Gazette of 1714,
‘Looking glasses, coach glasses and schandeliers’. This maker had an extensive and
profitable business supplying looking glasses of various types. Signed examples oc­
cur at Hampton Court and Chatsworth. Payment was made in 1720 to Gumley and
Moore, already mentioned, on behalf of Lord Burlington for brackets and sconces
supplied to Chiswick. Ralph Edwards has suggested the brackets might have been

3. Twelve-light chandelier. 1730-35.

The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum.
chandeliers. Certainly, the nomenclature for chandeliers had scarcely settled down
at that time. The terms ‘branch’ and ‘lustre’ are freely exchanged. A contemporary
dictionary lists ‘Sconce’ as a branched candlestick. Most contemporary descriptions
reserve this term for a pier glass when fitted with candle arms. ‘Four glass
chanderleres’, together with ‘two pairs of glass sconces’ which might have been
looking glasses with arms not necessarily of glass, appear in a 1725 inventory of the
contents of Cannons, the palace of the Duke of Chandos. Lady Burlington writes
to the architect Earl, ‘I hope you will remember about my branch, to have it hung
up, and the poize to be covered with green silk, of the same colour as the room and
like-wise cord, and the weight to be in the form of a tassell’. Whether she was fur­
nishing Chiswick or Burlington House at the time is not stated.
In the case of the chandelier in Fig. 2 large areas of the cutting are in flat planes;
these pieces could well have been ground and polished on the bench, there are,
however, some stem pieces which could only have been cut on the wheel. The one-
piece arm was soon found to be impractical. Spilled grease could not be removed
without taking down a whole arm. Fig 3 shows an improvement with detachable
drip pans. This much photographed chandelier, formerly at Thornham Hall, Suf­
folk. now hangs in the Charleston Dining Room at the Henry Francis du Pont
Winterthur Museum. The stem shows a combination of annular moulding and flat
cutting, the drip pans are ringed to match. So far, this early family of chandeliers
has had to rely on dating by style. However, the well-known chandelier which hangs

41
m the Chapel of Emanuel College, Cambridge, was given to the College in 1732.

It is the only one of the group whose arms are arranged in two tiers from two
receivers, but here again are the plain arms with slip-over drip pans and the same
combination of flat cutting and annular moulding. While the date of the gift is not
necessarily the date of manufacture, this is the closest we can come to a documented
example of these first English chandeliers. Before leaving the family, there is food
for thought in the consideration of a pair of small fittings at Grimsthorpe Castle.
They hang in galleries which flank the Vanburgh Hall. The Hall was designed in
1722 and completed in 1726. The chandeliers have un-cut glass arms and slip-over
annular pans. The shafts comprise large glass balls cut with broad diamonds in low
relief, and elaborate finials and receivers in gilt gesso. The glass details accord exact­
ly with those of the other chandeliers so far described. The gilt finials match those
of five other chandeliers hanging in the main body of the hall, which are certainly
of gilt gesso, thus suggesting a common maker. Here, then, is an example to rein­
force the suggestion that these first chandeliers were the product of the looking-glass
workshops such as that of Messrs. Gumley and Moore.
In 1732 the great Assembly Rooms at York were opened. The architect was Lord
Burlington, and he presented the organisers with ‘a magnificent centre lustre’. Over
the next few years a whole suite of chandeliers was provided for the Rooms. They
were in various sets and sizes, with arms generally arranged in two tiers, emerging
from separate receivers. The stempieces were not cut but of ‘crinkled’ glass (the
term used in surviving records), that is to say, reticulated or diamond-moulded. In
keeping with the lack of sophistication, the arms were of twisted rope pattern. There
are two chandeliers in the Treasurer’s House, York, much decayed, which answer
the description of the Assembly Rooms chandeliers in their surviving parts, and
may well be part of the series. Lord Burlington’s contribution is described in 1785
as ‘most curiously carved’, and it may therefore have been facet-cut, a standard of
quality to which the authorities may not have felt able to rise. Part of another series
of chandeliers of this date and style hang at Doddington Hall, Lincolnshire. The
tradition persists that they were originally supplied for use in the Lincoln Assembly
Rooms (1).
By the middle of the century, cutting had spread to arms. Fig. 4 illustrates a
splendid chandelier which now hangs in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, and was
placed there during the bi-centenary celebrations for the Declaration of In­
dependence, when the Hall was fully restored. The arms are cut along their length
to a six-sided section and the side angles notched. The low relief diamonds on the
stempieces have top cross cuts, a surface treatment which was almost universal for
some 20 years. However, the cutting is, in this case, curiously coarse. The position
of the smaller ball below the spring of the arms may show that the make! had the
well-known brass chandelier form in mind, but the use of a ball as the main feature
in the stems of early glass chandeliers seems to be the only link with traditional brass
chandeliers, a considerable percentage of which were in fact designed by this date
without a spherical feature at all. In the classic brass chandelier of the time which
probably came over from the Continent, the ball is below the arms. It is rare indeed
to find an early glass chandelier with the ball in this position, although, in the
absence of contemporary illustration at this date, who can say what order the maker
chose. The stems are merely nesting sections of shaped glass threaded on i<> a metal
rod, and could be assembled in any order. Indeed, one notes that, it! September
1750, the garrulous but gifted Mrs Delaney writes that she has “pulled her old lustre
to pieces, and is going to make one just like the Duchess of Portland’s’. (; morally
42
 i weive-ught chandelier. 1750-55. 5. n simple chandeln 1760.
Independence Hall, Philadelphia.
Private Collection.

6. IVade card of Maydwcll and Windlc,

Glass ‘Manufacturers’. 1760-65.
Private Collection.
speaking, if the chandelier has arms which sweep very low, as this one does, it is
piobablc that they were designed to encompass the ball. The slip-over pans have
a h,tie shallow cutting w.thin cut borders. This pattern of pan was current for some
< oi .)(> years and the zig-zag borders relate to the type of early cut sweetmeat glass
, " ’ ">."'C,I'C<; t>n1ms’> a Phrase wllich occurs in contemporary accounts as early as
I 1 7-°,s- ,S 5 shows a cut example of about 1755. Those who are familiar with
1 ■< u gulaily illustrated 1 rade Cards of the better-known makers may remember
m'infilling very similar on Maydvvell and VVindle’s card, Fig. 6, although
a con-
4:<
 lullull 1)1 Ine other things on the card, including another chandelier with pendent
and standing ornaments, shows that the card must date from the late 1750s or early
1760s. The borders of the pans are now swept into points by the ‘scalloper’. Details
such as this will be difficult to see in small illustrations. Invisible, alas, is the quality
of the construction. The arms will be set in lipped square cast brass mounts, each
individually fitted to a socket in the arm-plate and numbered accordingly. The arm-
plate itself would be a massive casting topped by a neatly-turned faceplate. Suspen­
sion shackles were often elaborate and finely bevelled.
The Trade Card of Messrs. Maydwell and Windle illustrates that a simple outline
need not indicate an early date. Thus, elaboration was available where show was
desired and money no object. It is in the more elaborate chandeliers of the 1760s
that they can be said to reflect the Rococo. A magnificent and rich pair of
chandeliers hang in the tribunes at the ends of the Long Gallery at Holkham, Fig.
7. They appear on an undated bill of Maydwell and cost £200 the pair. The Gallery
at Holkham was glazed in 1753, but their style suggests a date for these chandeliers
of 1760-65. Jerome Johnson was advertising ‘brilliant drops to hang on the lustres’
by 1756. The inventory of Thomas Betts (2), who died in 1765, lists ‘fleurs-de-lys’.
It appears from the crazy angle of their parts that these chandeliers are in unrestored
state. The general enrichment which chandeliers received during the 1760s included
these elaborate and varied ornaments, both standing and pendent, as well as the ad­
dition of canopies, or ‘shades’, above and below as additional suspension points.
The pendent ornaments added movement, and the combination of flickering
candles and gently swinging faceted glass must have been captivating. Several ex­
amples of rich Rococo chandeliers survive. Probably the most accessible is the
Thomastown chandelier at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The squat proportions
of its shaft suggest that it may have been considerably shortened. The order, too,
is suspect; nevertheless, it shows the degree of richness and elaboration reached at
this time with double-curved upper arms and a full house of hanging ornaments,
standing spires and, again, fleurs-de-lys. It would be more correct for the spires to
be notched on the angles at this date. They may have been replaced. The chandelier
was originally in the Church at Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny, whence it was sold in
Dublin in the 1914- 18 war. It was bought by a Major Mulville, who gave it to the
Museum in 1931. Its emergence some 20 miles from Waterford made its attribution
to this over-worked factory inescapable, but it is quite clearly of English make. It
is hanging in the Primary Galleries in the corner of a passage at an enormous height
and is thus virtually invisible. Various accidents to the Museum’s chandeliers have
dictated this prudence. Its eventual installation in the Norfolk House Museum
Room, a mutually enhancing combination, is the long-held hope of the writer.
The well-known series of chandeliers in the Assembly Rooms at Bath are fully
recorded (3). The story is complex: two makers were approached, William Parker
and Jonathan Collet. Parker provided a set of three chandeliers for the Tea Room
and Collet one large and four smaller for the Ball Room, hung in line with the larger
fitting in the centre. The Rooms were opened in October 1771 and Parker was paid
£330 for his chandeliers in the summer of that year. Collet charged £382 for his five
fittings, but they started shedding arms on the company at once and they had to be
dismantled. The same day, Parker was commissioned to ‘provide five lustres for the
Ball Room, the whole to contain two hundred candles, the fashion and ornaments
to be left to Mr Parker, who is to deliver and put them up in ten weeks at the farthest
for the sum of £500’. Parker fulfilled his contract and was paid in January 1772.
Collet eventually look back his set of four chandeliers and re-built the larger one,
44
7. One of a pair of chandeliers hanging in the 8. Forty-eight light chandelier by Jonathan Collet
Long Gallery, Holkham Hall, c. 1765. hanging in the Octagon of the Assembly
Rooms, Bath, 1771.
presumably making new arms for it, correctly annealed. This fitting was retained
by the Furnishing Committee for the Octagon, or large Card Room, where it still
hangs (Fig. 8). It is enormous and carries 48 lights in four tiers from two receivers.
Thomas Collet was successor to the well-known Thomas Betts previously men­
tioned. Amongst the considerable correspondence which resulted from the fracas at
Bath, Collet states that the size of the four discarded Ball Room chandeliers weighed
against their sale. However, the Assembly Room in the Market House at Taunton
was opened in October 1772, just a year after the Bath opening. It contained ‘two
elegant and large glass chandeliers’, which were the gift of Colonel Richard Coxe
when M.P. for the county, which he represented between 1768 and 1784. Some
lime in the 1930s two chandeliers of the date and style of Collet’s Bath fitting ap­
peared in London, the smashed arms of which were delivered to their new owners
in a sack. There was a tale attached that they had come from the Taunton Assembly
Rooms. They certainly shared many details with the Bath Octagon chandelier: the
amazing double-curved arms in two profiles, the hollow-blown finial cut all over in
hollow diamonds, and the unusual canopy, dished rather than of the far more usual
double ogee form. Other details, such as pans and surface treatment, are common
to many other chandeliers and makers, but it seems clear that these idiosyncrasies,
together with a surpassing ugliness, link these fittings to one maker and probably
indicate where Collet found a home for two of his four rejected chandeliers.
Collet was an old-fashioned maker, Parker fashionable. Little is known ot
William Parker before he appears at Bath. However, Jerome Johnson had a large
and prosperous cut-glass business between 1739 and 1761. In the former year he
advertised lustres and ‘to be sold cheap, the most magnificent lustre that ever was
made in England’, and by the latter date he was advertising ‘Chrystal lustres only,
Jerome Johnson has now made upwards of 20 and shall sell lustres cheaper and bet-
45
ter than any other maker of lustres in London, at the Star in Bow Street, Covent
Garden’. In 1752 he had announced ‘diamond cut and scalloped lustres’, perhaps
indicating deeper cutting than hitherto. It is clear he is no longer using the term in
the way used to describe the bevelling of plate glass, and the phrase underlines the
continuing separation of the two crafts of cutting and scalloping, one that of working
surfaces, the other borders. E. M. Elville has made the suggestion that William
Parker took over Jerome Johnson’s business and connections (4). Parker dissolved
partnership with Edward Whatton, potter and glass-seller, in 1762, and set up at
69 Fleet Street. Nothing seems to be heard of Jerome Johnson after this or, indeed,

9. One of a set of three forty-light chandeliers

made by William Parker for the Tea Room
of the Assembly Rooms, Bath, in 1771.
One of the receiver bowls is engraved with the
name and address of the maker.
about Parker before, although there is plenty of scope for research here. In Parker’s
Tea Room chandeliers (Fig. 9) the ball stem survives, albeit with a return to the flat
relief diamonds normal in the 1730s, but he has introduced vase-shaped stempieces
which, although of secondary importance to the balls, are the first neoclassical
details seen in chandeliers. Above all, the importance of these particular chandeliers
lies in the fact that one of them is signed. One of the receiver bowls is neatly engrav­
ed PARKER FLEET STREET LONDON. For the five splendid chandeliers in the
Ball Room Parker dispensed with ball stempieces and substituted larger urns. None
of his chandeliers retains the surface treatment of large diamonds with cross-cuts,
almost universal for the previous 20 years and still to be seen all over Collet’s
chandelier. Parker’s work at Bath, then, shows a clear advance in development in
his field and probably comprised that first bold stroke by which a brilliant man iden­
tifies, grasps and exploits a market. Certainly, Parker went from strength to
strength, as we shall see. It is fortunate that these chandeliers, by far the most im­
portant 18th century survivals of their class in both number and size, arc so closely
documented by the existence of the signed bowl backed by contemporary cor­
respondence.
Christopher Haedy, the London glass-seller and prolific advertiser in the Hath
Chronicle, amongst other journals, announced in November 1775 new retail pi emiscs
in Church Street, Bath, ‘where he has opened a curious collection of Girandoles on

46
the most elegant plan, ornamented with festoons of entire paste, etc., etc.’. This
term ‘festoons of entire paste’ is an intriguing one, since it is an odd way, even
allowing for the vagueness of contemporary terminology, to describe festoons of
graded drops. But there is a family of glass lighting fittings whose details include
festoons of solid glass. There are in fact girandoles or candelabra which may be just
such as Haedy advertised. Examples of chandeliers of this type hang at Uppark (Fig
10). They are original to the comprehensive refurnishing of the house by Sir Mat­
thew Featherstonhaugh, who died in 1774. There are candelabra of conforming
design there, too. This family of chandeliers is characterised by a central feature

10. One of two chandeliers at Uppark which date

from about 1775. The National Trust.

comprising a slender flared section fluted and notched, over a hemispherical piece
cut with large diamonds in very high relief. There are often small canopies of
trumpet or pagoda shape, stars and crescents as finials, notched spires and, of
course, one hopes for the solid festoons. The central feature seems to have developed
from the rather fat, notched spires which form the centres of contemporary
candelabra. Many candelabra or girandoles of the family survive and share details
with the chandeliers. They are invariably hung only with pear-shaped drops,
sometimes very thick, generally wired for suspension rather than drilled for pins,
and always used singly, never linked in chains. This is the first appearance of pear-
shaped pendent drops. Another example at Clandon, now inappropriately dressed
with chains of drops, is described in an inventory of 1778 as ‘a superb cut glass lustre
with festoon ornaments and brass chain’, again a phrase which suggests unit fes­
toons. Another, owned by the Duke of Northumberland, and formerly at Nor­
thumberland House and Albury, now at Alnwick, is described, albeit as late as
1890- 1910, as a ‘chandelier with stem and arms of cut glass, festooned and or­
namented with glass drops’. Others hang at Warwick Castle and Badminton. Was
! l.iedy the maker of this series? Or is the following clue a link to Collet? The top
stempieee of the great Octagon chandelier at Bath exactly resembles the upper part

47
of the characteristic central feature of the Uppark-type chandeliers. However, since
every other aspect of the Bath chandelier is old-fashioned and every part of an Up-
park chandelier is distinctive, it is a slender lead indeed, although one which might
well be explored one day. On the whole, at present, Haedy looks the best runner,
with his ‘festoons of entire paste’.
Before leaving the rococo period in chandeliers, it is worth stressing that the art
of cutting reached one of few peaks at this time, a peak matched by the quality of
the glass itself. The Uppark family of chandeliers, however bizarre their design, are
I
of a glass whose lead tint combines with brilliance of finish to produce a richness
never surpassed though sometimes equalled in later styles.
William Parker’s efficiency lingered long in the minds of those in authority at
Bath. When the Guildhall was rebuilt, after much controversy in 1775-8 by
Thomas Baldwin, Parker was again commissioned for three chandeliers for the Ban­
queting Room: they still hang there. It is most interesting to see that Parker’s
thoughts, so innovative at the Assembly Rooms, have scarcely moved on at all in
the six years that have passed. These chandeliers are richly dressed, but the chains
of linked circular drops, together with the chunky drip-pans and candle sconces are
19th century additions. Beneath this froth are the same double-curved arms and
simple vase stems whose combination was such a new departure at the Assembly
Rooms. Parker has introduced extra canopies or shades which might indicate that
these fittings may well have been more liberally enriched with ornamental pendants
than those in the Assembly Rooms. Against this is the fact that they cost less per
chandelier than their forebears.
By the early 1780s the neo-classical style had laid full hold on chandeliers, and
we find Parker supplying a pair to the Duke of Devonshire for Chatsworth (1). Their
layout is still not classic but comprises most of the elements required. There are the
large central vase and cover, vase-shaped sconces with Vandyke borders, festoons
of chains built up of graded and linked pear-shaped drops and, at the dividing
points, oval fan-cut four-ways representing paterae. The bill shows that they were
supplied in 1782 at a cost of £210. Although this is still only £100 or so a piece, they
are less than half the size of the Guildhall chandeliers at Bath. In these chandeliers
it can be seen that Parker, and probably other manufacturers, have discarded the
tube arm, substituting a separate sconce joined to the end of the arm by a mount
which itself incorporates a platform for a pan. Now a candle forgotten could cause
no more harm than a broken sconce, where formerly a replacement arm would have
been required.
By the end of the 1780s, the classic form had developed. A pair hangs in Arbury
Hall, Nuneaton (Fig. 11) which was supplied by Parker in 1788. The candlc-bcaring
arms, each with Vandyke pan and nozzle, alternate with an upper row, each with
spire and canopy. Vandyke bordered canopies are set above and below, the whole
is centred by a vase, and the top set off with a pineapple: a most pleasing design
and one produced by various markers with little variant, despite changes in taste
and minor experiments with alternatives, for some 20 years. Indeed, the period of
popularity of this classic design is neatly spanned in this house, since records survive
of an order placed by Sir Roger Newdigate for a further larger chandelier from the
same maker in 1804. A letter exists from Parker and Perry (as the firm had now
become), recommending the arms of the projected chandelier be plain fluted, since
‘plain arms have succeeded those cut hollows and are more generally approved’. It
is most satisfactory to note that all three of these chandeliers still hang in the house
and have, so far, escaped restoration.
48
11. One of a pair of neo-classical chandeliers at 12. A good neo-classical chandelier with gill
Arbury Hall, Nuneaton, supplied by ‘furniture’, c. 1795. It closely resembles a
William Parker in 1788. fitting at Clandon Park.

Alternatives to the classic form of the neo-classical chandelier included additional

rows of candle-carrying arms to increase the amount of light given by larger ex­
amples. It was recorded that a grand chandelier was shipped to William Bedford in
Lisbon in 1791, presumably by Parker, since the information survived in the records
of Perry and Co. It was described as a ‘20 light lustre richly cut with gilt furniture,
paste arms, scrolls, prisms and tabled drops’. The layout of 20 lights plus prisms
(spires) indicates that it carried two rows of candle arms at two levels as well as a
further row above for the spires. The gilt furniture mentioned will have included
ormolu rings cast with running motifs, such as Vitruvian Scroll, and fitted to the
upper rims of the receiver bowls and the widest part of the stem vases, enrichments
reserved for the more expensive fittings, no doubt (Fig. 12).
The basic elements of chandeliers of this type were juggled extensively by their
designers, the arms returning on occasion to a double-curved profile fashionable
previously around 1775, and the top shades or canopies being dispensed with in
favour of an arrangement of leafy fronds in gilt metal. At the same time, vertical
chains were introduced, at first sparingly but later closely spaced. Soon these ver­
tical chains were flared out to a widened row of arm sockets, forming a graceful,
sketchy tent in which the still-classical glass stempieces were framed. A splendid ex­
ample of this type of chandelier was presented to the Worshipful Company of Iron­
mongers for their Livery Hall in 1803. Although rather altered now, the original
layout can be detected, and most of the original parts are still there. Highly in­
dividual creations on the theme were achieved by one Moses Lafount. There is a
well-known Agreement of 1796 between this gentleman and two brothers named
Con, jassmakers at Christchurch in Surrey, to exploit Lafount's invention ot a new
49
design for chandeliers, candelabra and wall lights. The essence of the design was
that the arms should appear to pass vertically through the arm-plate in one con­
tinuous arc of glass. The resulting chandeliers were undeniably elegant and dif­
ferent. They were not infrequently stamped on the arm-plate LAFOUNT
PATENT.
Between 1783 and 1786 we find William Parker supplying chandeliers to a total
of nearly £2,500 to Carlton House on its completion by Henry Holland. At this
period, these must have been neo-classical in style, and none seems to have surviv­
ed. An idea of the size of Parker’s involvement at Carlton House can be gauged by
comparing the cost of the three Guildhall chandeliers at Bath, eight feet high and
carrying 32 lights each, at £266 in 1778, with the sum of approximately £4,000 for
work carried out and projected in the six years between 1783 and 1789.
Henry Holland died in 1806 and at that time, the Prince of Wales, who had
ceaselessly tinkered with the Palace since its completion, embarked on a major re­
furnishing once more. The first important commission for Parker and Perry, as the
firm was now styled following amalgamation with William Perry in 1802-3, was
for a 56-light chandelier for the Crimson Drawing Room at a cost of 1,000 guineas.
It was made in 1808 and was 14 feet high and 6 feet 6 inches in diameter. It was
accompanied by four smaller chandeliers en suite to hang in the angles of the room.
Pyne, whose great work on the Royal Residences (5) gives us detailed pictures of
many of the rooms, considered this great chandelier to be one of the finest in
Europe. An elaborate series of lighting fittings followed, many of which can be seen
in Pyne, although none, as has been said, of the chandeliers supplied in the 1780s
appears. All these 19th century chandeliers were taken down on the eventual
dismantling of Carlton House in 1826. Many were subsequently brought up to date
by the makers and installed, in 1834, at Buckingham Palace, where they remain.
We have now come well into the period of what one usually calls ‘Regency’ frame
chandeliers. As has been said, the essence of a frame chandelier is the elimination
of a heavy brass plate drilled with sockets to take the arms. The arms now emerged
from a circular frame of considerable diameter, either plain or enriched with a cast
gallery according to taste or cost. To this descended the tent from a top, generally
given emphasis with a series of dishes fringed with icicle drops. Below could be a
basket formed of more graded chains, or a ‘waterfall’ frame of concentric rings
decreasing in diameter, and again hung with icicle or other long drops. It will not
have escaped notice that the price of chandeliers has escalated dramatically with the
advent of the 19th century. This was not due to inflation, or only to a small degree.
It was due to changes in design. By the 1780s, nearly all chandelier drops were
lapidary-cut or ‘tabled’ to a degree of accuracy only equalled in jewellery. One is
constantly seeing references to ‘paste’ drops. When, without any fall in quality,
fashion began to clothe chandeliers in more and more chains of drops, the c ost rose
accordingly. Many circular pendent drops are cut with 48 facets on each side, each
facet being ground and polished several times with increasingly fine grades ol
abrasive to a finish in which no polishing marks can be detected in reflected light.
A cardinal feature of a Regency chandelier is often the tent. Tents developed from
the first use of vertical chains noted earlier. They comprise a tapering form compos­
ed of 30 or more chains, each chain containing 30 or more drops of perhaps 6 or
7 sizes. The sizes increase as the tent falls and spreads, so that there are n<» voids
(Fig. 13). Such a tent would require 900 drops, and the simplest circular chain drop
would be cut with 16 facets on each side. Multiply 32 by 900 - and the- point is
made. That was why chandeliers became costly.
50
 The amount of hand work which could be put into an elaborate Regency
chandelier can be seen by close inspection of the famous 16-light example from
Wroxton Abbey, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. All the metalwork is
silver-plated and lacquered. The chandelier is topped by three graded diamond-cut
dishes within frames, it has step-cut arms and diamond-cut nozzles. The main frame
is fitted with a continuous step-cut cornice, and it and the three top frames are close­
ly set with rows of square diamond-cut ornaments. The amount of machining in a
chandelier of this type is unbelievable, since every mount is individually fitted and
numbered.

13 . An elaborate chandelier by John Blades for

which the drawing survives, dated 1828.
Hotspur Ltd.

Among the most prolific makers of chandeliers and other things at this time was
John Blades. He had showrooms on Ludgate Hill, convenient, as had been Parker’s
at 69 Fleet Street, for James Powell’s Whitefriars Glassworks. The two firms were
major clients of Whitefriars. A certain amount is known about the chandelier output
of Blades although not perhaps as much as Parker’s. There are, for instance, ac­
counts for lustres supplied to the Grosvenor family at Eaton Hall between 1808 and
1810 totalling £2,600. The chandelier in Fig. 13 was made by Blades for a house
in Scotland in 1828 and its working drawing has survived intact with it. Note that
it is hung entirely with rule-cut drops. J. B. Papworth, the architect, was retained
by Blades as designer, and is credited with the invention of these parallel-sided
drops. The form of nozzle and pan, and the details of the coronet and arm castings
are readily recognisable, and it is a comfort to be able to tie a whole group of lighting
fittings to one maker by this means. Some of their fittings were extremely rich, and
gold plating was quite usual, as opposed to the less costly gold lacquered finish.
Elaborate chandeliers in the Greek taste, incorporating groups of handsome sconces
hung with long rule-cut drops and set round shallow dishes of ground glass cut with
polished anthemion borders, the whole structure hanging on chains whose long links
incorporated glass insertions, survived at Ashburnham Place. They were dispersed
ai the sale of the contents of the house in the 1960s. There are constant references
Calcutta newspapers to the arrival of glass from Blades. Unless commissioned
r» i
direct, it was auctioned on arrival. Some of the chandeliers in the old Viceroy’s
House in Calcutta appear to be Blades types. It is said they were taken to Delhi (6),
but if so, Lutyens side-stepped them in favour of his own designs.
F. and C. Osier, the Birmingham makers, produced chandeliers of steadily in­
creasing quality during the second half of the 19th century. By this time, many
chandeliers were being made for gas, and complicated arrangements were made for
the safe passage of the gas by way of the central shaft and out through hollow arms
to fish-tail burners. Fig. 14 is a particularly good Osier chandelier with a series of
Lafount-like arms bearing spires, and groups of arms for candles below. A splendid
fitting, but probably by now hung with imported drops. By the 1870s, it was not
uncommon to find the dressings all of soda glass, at least in Osier examples. Never,
however, with Perry and Co, still busy making fine chandeliers for the top of the
market and with a prestige address in Bond Street.

14. Eightccn-light chandelier of complicated

design by F. and C. Osier, Birmingham.
1850-60. Dclomosne and Son Ltd.
While Perry’s sustained a varied output of lighting fittings, the name, in the se­
cond half of the 19th century at least, is synonymous with a particular series. Their
principal components included long, slender stempieces centring on a very small
urn-shaped or ovoid section, generous double-ogee canopies above, a similar­
shaped dish inverted as a receiver bowl, and a distribution of two or three pans on
the shafts to carry extra drops. The lop normally terminated in a cup-shaped piece
to contain the suspension shackle, and a long-shanked lapidary cut finial completed
the layout below. All the pieces were finished with neat mitred fluting, continuous
rows of oval printies or interlocking hexagons, all meticulously achieved io a very
small scale. Arms were normally of twisted rope pattern, drip pans either line fluted
or moulded to a limited number of designs. There were seldom candle sconces,
mer ely turned inch-diameter cups of silvered brass with a narrow ledge for the pan,
or gas fittings. Above all, there were sumptuous dressings of graded circular double-

52
cut drops and finial pear-drops of the highest quality. No imported imitations for
Perry and Co.! Hundreds of chandeliers were made to this broad specification.
They are to be seen today in many country houses. Fig. 15 shows one of a pair of
classic Perry chandeliers of about 1870 with large and prominent crooks or scrolls.
A drawing survives, dated 1871, of a chandelier with similar features, in a book of
such designs in the Victoria and Albert Museum. This book, filled with a series of
working drawings of chandeliers of this kind, generally annotated with the names
of those who had ordered each chandelier, and the dates of these orders, was given
to a Mr John Wateridge by Mr Barlett, owner of Perry and Co. in the late 19th
century. He appears to have bought the business from the previous owners, whose
names were Willis and Miley. He had formerly been a chief draughtsman for the
firm and on this, and the existence of his sketch book, we can perhaps attribute the
design of the classic Perry chandelier of the 1860s and 70s to him.

15. One of a pair of chandeliers, originally for gas,

by Perry & Co., hung with uncut pendent
spheres, c. 1870. Delomosne & Son Ltd.
This brief review of English glass chandeliers has been dominated by William
Parker and the successors to the firm he founded, Perry and Co. When, in 1938,
J. B. Pcrret investigated the chandeliers at Bath, he followed the history of the firm
to its eventual winding-up in 1935. The said John Wateridge had seen the results
of Mr Ferret’s researches and had written to him of his intense interest. Through
him, Mr Perret reached the elderly Mr Rigby Wason, penultimate owner of
Perry's, who sold out to Burt, Escare & Denell Ltd. All this effort was aimed at a
sight of the design records of the firm. The first edition of Macquoid and Edwards’
DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH FURNITURE, 1924, mentions ‘the Perry papers’
as a considerable scries of drawings of important chandeliers with their buyers and
dates, and actually illustrates two examples, albeit poorly drawn. Mr Perret himself
had mei Mr Burt in the early 1930s and had been shown some of the Perry records.
But, ;»1.; , when the firm finally died with an auction sale of their effects in 1935,

53
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16. Working drawing for a ‘classic’ neo-classical chandelier of about 1790- 1800 by John Wateridgc,
designer for Perry & Co. between 1903 and 1925. Prints and Drawings Department, Victoria and
Albert Museum.

the buyer of the series of plan chests full of papers appears to have scrapped the
papers and used the plan chests. Lot 1128 in the catalogue makes painful reading:
‘An ebonised plan chest of 16 drawers containing . . . portfolios of water colour
drawings and sketches of State chandeliers etc. by Perry and Co’. However, surviv­
ing records of John Wateridge provide some tenuous contact with the archives of
the company. He was designer for the firm between 1903 and 1925 and fortunately,
presumably to train his eye, drew details of surviving stock parts into his sketch
books. Here we can see accurate portrayals of many surviving parts, complete
chandeliers and, on occasion, candelabra and other fittings of instantly recognisable
patterns. Through Wateridge, therefore, we are able to attribute to the firm several
things of late 18th and early 19th century date, to say nothing of the late 19th cen­
tury chandeliers which were included in the Wateridge archive, since he was
presented with Bartlett’s own sketch book. All these things went to the Victoria and
Albert Museum in 1952. As an example of the sort of things which survived until
John Wateridge’s time in the archives of the firm, one working drawing is illustrated
here (Fig. 16). It is chosen from many, partly because of its layout, half in elevation,
half sectioned, and partly because it shows a classic neo-classical chandelier of about
1790- 1800 in clear detail and perfect proportion; this is the point at which techni­
que and design met in unsurpassed harmony. Although, as has been seen, the story
went on, this, surely, was the peak.
There is much omitted here: the many known makers left without mention, the
amazing creations at the Brighton Pavilion, the handsome fittings made for
Goldsmith’s Hall, and still hanging there, the place of Ireland (negligible but
evocative), the use of colour; but there is no room for more.

54
\
 Footnotes
1.1 am grateful to Mr R. J. Charleston for information about chandeliers in the Assembly Rooms,
York and at Doddington and Chatsvvorth.
2. ‘Thomas Betts - An Eighteenth Century Glass Cutter’, by Alexander Werner, The Journal of the
Glass Association, Vol. 1, 1985.
3.‘The Eighteenth Century Chandeliers at Bath’, byj. Bernard Perret, Connoisseur, October 1938.
4. ‘The History of the Glass Chandelier’, by E. M. Elville, Country Life Annual, 1949.
5. ‘The History of the Royal Residences’, by W. H. Pync, 1819.
6. 'British Government in India’, by The Marquis Curzon of Kcdlcston, Cassell, 1925.

).»